Eeyores news and view

For the last 6 years or so have gone to a certain camp in adjoining State and watched fireworks display, i would have to say this year was as good as it has been. Here are a few pictures.

The pictures were actually taken by my daughter this year, timing is hard but she got it. The ones from last years blog were mine.

North Korea fires 7 missilesSEOUL (AP) — North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles Saturday into waters off its east coast in a show of military firepower that defied U.N. resolutions and drew global expressions of condemnation and concern.
The salvo, confirmed by the South Korean government, also appeared to be a slap at the United States as Washington moves to enforce U.N. as well as its own sanctions against the isolated regime for its May 25 nuclear test.
The launches came on July 4, which is U.S. Independence Day. The display was similar to one that took place three years ago, also while Americans celebrated the Fourth of July during another period of tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
The number of missiles was the same, though in 2006 North Korea also launched a long-range rocket that broke apart and fell into the ocean less than a minute after liftoff.
South Korea said Saturday's missiles likely flew more than 250 miles, apparently landing in waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
South Korea and Japan both condemned the launches, with Tokyo calling them a "serious act of provocation." Britain and France issued similar statements.
Russia and China, both close to North Korea, expressed concern over an "escalation of tension in the region," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement after a meeting in Moscow.
In Washington, the White House had no immediate comment. But two senior officials in President Obama's administration, speaking in advance of the launches, said any reaction was likely to be muted to avoid giving attention to Pyongyang or antagonize it. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
North Korea has engaged in a series of acts this year widely seen as provocative. It fired a long-range rocket it said was a satellite in early April, and in late May it carried out its second underground nuclear test following the first in late 2006.
The country has also stoked tensions with rival South Korea and last month threatened "thousand-fold" military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked.
In addition, North Korea convicted two American journalists last month and sentenced them to 12 years hard labor for illegally entering the country. It is also holding a South Korean worker for allegedly denouncing its political system.
The secretive communist country is believed undergoing a political transition in which 67-year-old leader Kim Jong Il appears to be laying the groundwork to transfer power to one of his sons. Kim himself took over from his late father, the country's founder.
South Korean officials said Saturday's launches came throughout the day and were part of military exercises. The North, which had warned ships to stay away from waters off the east coast through July 10, also fired what are believed to have been four short-range cruise missiles Thursday.
Speculation had been building for weeks that the launches were coming. The key question has been whether the North might fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, as it vowed to do in late April.
Despite a Japanese newspaper report last month that one might be launched toward Hawaii in early July, U.S. officials have noted no such preparations, which are complex, usually take days and are often observable by spy satellites. Still, that hasn't stopped Washington from boosting missile defenses as a precaution.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency suggested launch activity may be winding down, at least for now. It reported late Saturday, citing an unidentified military official, that the North was pulling personnel from its missile launch site and allowing ships to sail again off the coast. The Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report.
North Korea's state news agency did not mention the launches, so it was hard to grasp Pyongyang's true intentions. Officials and analysts, however, said they showed the country remains happy to stand up to the international community and appears unwilling to give in to efforts to punish it.
"I think it's a demonstration of their defiance and rejection of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, for one thing, and to demonstrate their military power capabilities to any potential adversaries" as well as potential customers for its weapons, said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank.
Pinkston also said that there was "certainly a political aspect connected" to the launches and that July 4 was perhaps a "symbolic date," suggesting the timing was not a coincidence.
Resolution 1874, which was approved last month and which condemned the North's nuclear test, was the third to be passed by the U.N. Security Council against the country since 2006. All three ban North Korea from launching ballistic missiles.
A senior official in South Korea's presidential office said that while the launches were part of military exercises, "North Korea also appeared to have sent a message to the U.S.," though he did not elaborate.
Analysts have said North Korea's saber rattling is partially aimed at pressuring Washington to engage in direct negotiations. North Korea is believed to desire diplomatic relations and a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War.
Obama's administration has offered dialogue, but it says North Korea must return to stalled international talks on its denuclearization and stop engaging in what Washington sees as provocative behavior threatening allies South Korea and Japan.
Paik Hak-soon, an expert on North Korea at the Sejong Institute, a think tank near Seoul, rejected the idea that the North chose July 4 to confront or annoy the U.S. on its national day.
He said the launches were more likely a warning to the international community against enforcing U.N. sanctions, which call for searches of North Korean ships suspected of carrying banned items, such as nuclear or missile parts.
He said North Korea will continue to carry out more missile and nuclear tests in the future, as long as relations with the U.S. and South Korea remain tense.
"The structure of confrontation is there, intact," he said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-07-03-nkorea-missiles_N.htm

Venezuela assumes control of Spanish-owned bank
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez's government assumed control of Venezuela's third-largest bank on Friday - making the state the largest player in the nation's banking system.
The purchase of the Spanish-owned Banco de Venezuela gives Chavez's socialist government control over more than one-fifth of bank deposits as he tightens his grip over the economy.
The acquisition will "strengthen the public banking system," which favors sectors including agriculture, energy, housing and tourism, Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said in a statement.
In May, the Venezuelan government agreed to pay Spain's Grupo Santander $1.05 billion for the bank, ending months of stalled negotiations.
At the time, Banco de Venezuela had 3.2 million clients, 10 percent of the country's deposits and 6,000 employees.
Combined with other state banks, the government will now control about 21 percent of deposits and 16 percent of loans, a payroll of 15,000 employees and 651 bank branches.
The deal went into effect on Friday with an initial payment of $630 million. The rest will be paid in two equal installments in October and December.
Like the rest of the economy, Venezuela's banking sector is already highly regulated, with the government dictating interest rates and commissions.
Under Chavez, Venezuela has nationalized major players in the steel, electricity and other sectors, including four major oil projects, since 2007.
The Venezuelan consulting firm Ecoanalitica calculates those nationalizations have cost Chavez's government some $23 billion.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090704/D997DI2G1.html

GBPPR Tech Bulletin #9 - Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (NEMP) Survival

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This was originally going to be a big long article on some myths/facts of nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) effects on modern communication gear. Well, it's just going to be some ramdom quotes and comments for awhile.

Excerpt from Gary, KE4ZV


>On the contrary, an EMP will not really affect people, but it will do
>a good job of destroying most unprotected transistor circuitry. Old
>tube technology is pretty much immune.


That's the myth, but it has been pretty well discredited. For a normal low air burst or ground burst detonation, the EMP effects reach no further than the flash burn and blast effects, IE roughly 30 miles for the typical "city buster" bomb. In other words, if it cooks your radio, it'll cook you too.

For a very high altitude detonation, EMP effects can spread over a wide area outside the range of flash burn and blast effects. But to be damaged, electronic equipment needs to be connected to fairly long unprotected exposed conductors in order for enough voltage to be induced to cause breakdown. The ARRL published tests on a number of amateur radios, tested in a military EMP simulator, to see what would typically happen in such a case. Battery powered VHF/UHF equipment using a "rubber ducky" antenna was immune to damage. Equipment connected to unprotected mains power suffered power supply damage. And HF equipment connected to unprotected outside antennas suffered receiver front end damage. For solid state equipment, this damage was to the first RF stage transistor, for tube equipment, it was damage to the first stage grid resistor. No transmitters suffered damage.

And there is effective EMP protection available. EMP can be considered merely as a fast risetime form of nearby lightning strike. In both cases, an induced surge enters the equipment via a long exposed conductor. If you are using good lightning surge protection with fast risetime protectors, such as the EMP rated units sold by Polyphaser (and others), and have practiced the kind of station layout I've preached about here many times, there should be no more cause for concern about EMP damage than from lightning surge damage.

Thanks to inverse square effects, an EMP detonation at a 200 mile altitude, the ideal height to maximize EMP effects, has a field strength at your antenna about equivalent to a lightning strike at 7 miles. But the effect on very long exposed conductors, like the power grid or the telephone grid, is as if there were simultaneous lightning strikes 7 miles from *every* point of the grid. This causes a huge voltage to develop on these extended grids, and can cause severe damage to them. Your radio and antennas don't represent such a widespread grid, so they are only subjected to the equivalent of a single lightning surge.

In any case, if you were to suffer EMP damage, the receiver and mains power supplies would be the most likely candidates for damage. CW transmitters offer you no advantage in either of those cases since you still need a working receiver and power source to establish communications regardless of operating mode.

And frankly, for some time (perhaps years) after a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, HF would be useless thanks to disruption of the ionosphere. Only VLF would work for long range communications, which is why the military operates VLF stations for nuclear command and control. VHF+ would continue to work for short range communications. Since neither typically uses Morse, Morse knowledge would be virtually useless after a nuclear exchange.


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Excerpt from Phil, KA9Q

No, not HF CW. Try LF packet radio. Have you heard of the Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN)? It is specifically designed to work after the Big One is dropped.

You have to admit that for this application, packet has some nice advantages over CW. For example, it'll keep working after all the humans on the planet (yes, this includes all of the CW operators) have been killed off by radiation. (Remember "On the Beach"?)

I may not think much of the doomsday thinking that led to the construction of GWEN. But I must admit to being glad to have it around because I can use it to annoy the heck out of the "CW, vacuum tubes, blood and guts forever" types who keep insisting that they'll have a complete monopoly on communications after a nuclear war has toasted all of the more modern electronics... :-)


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Excerpt from Gary, KE4ZV

According to the ARRL test data in the Navy's NEMP simulator, that's not the case. The real hazard is to radios connected to long exposed unprotected conductors, IE mains power or HF antennas. In the tests, tube type HF rigs sustained damage to the front end coil assemblies. Battery powered VHF solid state radios sustained no damage. HF radios, solid state or tube, protected by suitable NEMP suppression (properly installed) suffered no damage. And no disconnected radio suffered any damage.

The high impedance of tube equipment tends to make it more susceptable to flashovers in the input circuitry. Since that's harder to change than a tube, the advantage of tubes is moot. NEMP protection is available today, and with that properly installed, there is no reason to fear NEMP.


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Excerpt from QST August 1986, "EMP and the Radio Amateur"

... condensed from NCS TIB 85-10 "EMP threat testing of protection devices for amateur / military affiliate radio systems equipment". I quote "The electric field strength remains fairly constant in the 10 kHz to 1 MHz band; it decreases by as factor of 100 in the 1 to 100 MHz band and continue to decrease at a faster rate for frequencies greater than 100 MHz" So, it appears that EMP field strength decreases by at least an order of magnitude for each decade of frequency above 1 MHz. So. Your quarter inch vent will resonate and allow radio wave to pass above about the 10 GHz range. 10 GHz is 4 decades above 1 MHz so:

The electric field strength transmitted through a quarter inch hole will be less than one ten thousandth the electric field strength in open air.


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Excerpt from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ

5.5 Electromagnetic Effects

The high temperatures and energetic radiation produced by nuclear explosions also produce large amounts of ionized (electrically charged) matter which is present immediately after the explosion. Under the right conditions, intense currents and electromagnetic fields can be produced, generically called EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), that are felt at long distances. Living organisms are impervious to these effects, but electrical and electronic equipment can be temporarily or permanently disabled by them. Ionized gasses can also block short wavelength radio and radar signals (fireball blackout) for extended periods.

The occurrence of EMP is strongly dependent on the altitude of burst. It can be significant for surface or low altitude bursts (below 4,000 m); it is very significant for high altitude bursts (above 30,000 m); but it is not significant for altitudes between these extremes. This is because EMP is generated by the asymmetric absorption of instantaneous gamma rays produced by the explosion. At intermediate altitudes the air absorbs these rays fairly uniformly and does not generate long range electromagnetic disturbances.

The formation EMP begins with the very intense, but very short burst of gamma rays caused by the nuclear reactions in the bomb. About 0.3% of the bomb's energy is in this pulse, but it lasts for only 10 nanoseconds or so. These gamma rays collide with electrons in air molecules, and eject the electrons at high energies through a process called Compton scattering. These energetic electrons in turn knock other electrons loose, and create a cascade effect that produces some 30,000 electrons for every original gamma ray.

In low altitude explosions the electrons, being very light, move much more quickly than the ionized atoms they are removed from and diffuse away from the region where they are formed. This creates a very strong electric field which peaks in intensity at 10 nanoseconds. The gamma rays emitted downward however are absorbed by the ground which prevents charge separation from occurring. This creates a very strong vertical electric current which generates intense electromagnetic emissions over a wide frequency range (up to 100 MHZ) that emanate mostly horizontally. At the same time, the earth acts as a conductor allowing the electrons to flow back toward the burst point where the positive ions are concentrated. This produces a strong magnetic field along the ground. Although only about 3x10^-10 of the total explosion energy is radiated as EMP in a ground burst (10^6 joules for 1 Mt bomb), it is concentrated in a very short pulse. The charge separation persists for only a few tens of microseconds, making the emission power some 100 gigawatts. The field strengths for ground bursts are high only in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. For smaller bombs they aren't very important because they are strong only where the destruction is intense anyway. With increasing yields, they reach farther from the zone of intense destruction. With a 1 Mt bomb, they remain significant out to the 2 psi overpressure zone (5 miles).

High altitude explosions produce EMPs that are dramatically more destructive. About 3x10^-5 of the bomb's total energy goes into EMP in this case, 10^11 joules for a 1 Mt bomb. EMP is formed in high altitude explosions when the downwardly directed gamma rays encounter denser layers of air below. A pancake shaped ionization region is formed below the bomb. The zone can extend all the way to the horizon, to 2500 km for an explosion at an altitude of 500 km. The ionization zone is up to 80 km thick at the center. The Earth's magnetic field causes the electrons in this layer to spiral as they travel, creating a powerful downward directed electromagnetic pulse lasting a few microseconds. A strong vertical electrical field (20-50 KV/m) is also generated between the Earth's surface and the ionized layer, this field lasts for several minutes until the electrons are recaptured by the air. Although the peak EMP field strengths from high altitude bursts are only 1-10% as intense as the peak ground burst fields, they are nearly constant over the entire Earth's surface under the ionized region.

The effects of these field on electronics is difficult to predict, but can be profound. Enormous induced electric currents are generated in wires, antennas, and metal objects (like missiles, airplanes, and building frames). Commercial electrical grids are immense EMP antennas and would be subjected to voltage surges far exceeding those created by lightning, and over vastly greater areas. Modern VLSI chips are extremely sensitive to voltage surges, and would be burned out by even small leakage currents. Military equipment is generally designed to be resistant to EMP, but realistic tests are very difficult to perform and EMP protection rests on attention to detail. Minor changes in design, incorrect maintenance procedures, poorly fitting parts, loose debris, moisture, and ordinary dirt can all cause elaborate EMP protections to be totally circumvented. It can be expected that a single high yield, high altitude explosion over an industrialized area would cause massive disruption for an indeterminable period, and would cause huge economic damages (all those damaged chips add up).

A separate effect is the ability of the ionized fireball to block radio and radar signals. Like EMP, this effect becomes important with high altitude bursts. Fireball blackout can cause radar to be blocked for tens of seconds to minutes over an area tens of kilometers across. High frequency radio can be disrupted over hundreds to thousands of kilometers for minutes to hours depending on exact conditions.

Links

Radio Frequency Weapons and Proliferation: Potential Impact on the Economy

PolyPhaser Nuclear EMP Protection Devices

GWEN Ground Wave Emergency Network

The Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Contains a few errors, good overall

Engineering and Design - Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and Tempest Protection for Facilities Proponent: CEMP-ET Straight from the U.S. Army. (Text)

Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) Radios designed to survive in a nuclear environment

SINCGARS Datasheet (1.2M PDF)

The Electromagnetic Bomb - A Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction (909k PDF)

Bell System Nuclear Design Criteria (1969)
Notes

Atmospheric NEMP burst tend to be vertically polarized.

The Effects of Nuclear War, Office of Technology Assesment, OTA-NS-89, May 1979.

NEMP has a pulse shape corresponding to the NCS TIB-85-10.

Solid state electronics are more power efficient than legacy tube-type equipment, making for easier portable battery operation.
GBPPR HERF / EMP Projects

GBPPR Microwave Oven Experiments

GBPPR HERF Device

GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 1

GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 2

GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 3

GBPPR 2.45 GHz Magnetron to Coax Assembly

http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/emp.html

Iran judiciary told to confront hostile satellite TV
TEHRAN (Reuters) - The head of Iran's judiciary called on Sunday for the prosecution of people working for increasingly influential anti-establishment satellite TV channels and websites, state television reported.
"The daily growth of anti-regime satellite channels and ... websites needs serious measures to confront this phenomenon," it quoted a circular issued by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi as saying.
Iran accused Western powers of interfering in its affairs, after the announcement that hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a landslide victory in the June 12 election prompted protests in which at least 20 people were killed.
The circular, addressed to branches of the judiciary, called for judicial personnel to be assigned to deal with such violations.
"Those who cooperate with such websites and television channels will face prosecution," Hashemi-Shahroudi said.
For the first time in Iran, foreign-based satellite TV channels, particularly the BBC's Persian TV, and blogs played a big part in providing news and comment about the election.
Iranians are more used to hearing political messages blared through loudspeakers on small trucks, seeing gaudy posters and being herded to campaign rallies.
The BBC launched its Persian TV service in January, funded with 15 million pounds ($25 million) a year of British government money. The BBC increased the number of satellites carrying the service after Iran interfered with transmission during the election.
Iran expelled the BBC's correspondent in Tehran because of the broadcaster's election coverage, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called Britain the "most treacherous" of Iran's enemies.
Popular social networking and content-sharing site Facebook was blocked in Iran on May 23, joining political and human rights websites which had already been blocked. More than 150,000 Iranians are Facebook members.
More than 23 million of Iran's 70 million people have access to the Internet, and over 45 million have mobile phones.
Two losing contenders in the presidential election have unleashed fierce attacks on the official outcome of the vote.
Moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi and reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi also say the government wants to force Iranians to rely on state-run media, which they say favour Ahmadinejad.
Both men issued statements on their websites saying Ahmadinejad's new government would be "illegitimate" -- even though Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's ultimate arbiter, has upheld the result and thrown his weight behind the president.
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-40815420090705

The call for a Global currency is broadening.
India Joins Russia, China in Questioning U.S. Dollar Dominance
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Suresh Tendulkar, an economic adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said he is urging the government to diversify its $264.6 billion foreign-exchange reserves and hold fewer dollars.
“The major part of Indian reserves is in dollars -- that is something that’s a problem for us,” Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said in an interview yesterday in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he was attending an economic conference.
Singh is preparing to join leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- at a summit in Italy next week which is due to tackle the global economy. China and Brazil will also send representatives to the summit.
As the talks have neared, China and Russia have stepped up calls for a rethink of how global currency reserves are composed and managed, underlining a power shift to emerging markets from the developed nations that spawned the financial crisis.
“There should be a system to maintain the stability of the major reserve currencies,” Former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said in a speech in Beijing yesterday, highlighting China’s concerns about a global financial system dominated by the dollar.
Fiscal and current-account deficits must be supervised as “your currency is likely to become my problem,” said Zeng, who is now the head of a research center under the government’s top economic planning agency. The People’s Bank of China said June 26 that the International Monetary Fund should manage more of members’ reserves.
Russian Proposals
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the dollar’s future as a global reserve currency. Russia’s proposals for the Group of 20 major developed and developing nations summit in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency.
“We will resume” talks on the supranational currency proposal at the G-8 summit in L’Aquila on July 8-10, Medvedev aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters in Moscow yesterday.
Singh adviser Tendulkar said that big dollar holders face a “prisoner’s dilemma” in terms of managing their holdings. “That’s why I’m telling them to do this,” he said.
He also said that world currencies need to adjust to help unwind trade imbalances that have contributed to the global financial crisis.
“The major imbalances which led to the current situation, the current account surpluses and deficits, have to be addressed,” he said. “Currency adjustment is one thing that suggests itself.”
Emerging-Market Dependence
For all the complaints about the dollar, emerging markets such as India remain dependent on the currency of the U.S., the world’s largest economy and a $2.5 trillion export market. The IMF said June 30 that the share of dollars in global foreign- exchange reserves increased to 65 percent in the first three months of this year, the highest since 2007.
Tendulkar said that the matter needs to be taken up in international talks, and that it emphasizes the need for those talks to go beyond the traditional G-8.
“They can meet if they want to,” he said. “The G-20 has a wider role, has representation of the countries that are likely to lead the recovery process.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aR7yfqUwTb4M

Eeyores news and view

The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence proved freedom is not free
Wednesday, 01 July 2009 Rev. John C. Blackford Religion Columnist
This is the time of the year when Americans celebrate patriotic themes. Memorial Day and Flag Day are meaningful, but the Fourth of July is accompanied by the most fanfare. Bands, parades and speeches remind us of our cherished gift of freedom.
Forest Lake has one of the largest Independence Day celebrations in Minnesota and it happens this week, July 1-4.
It all began on July 4, 1776 in the city of Philadelphia when a small group of men, suffering under the restraints of a European power 3000 miles away, and acting as the Second Continental Congress, declared their 13 colonies to be free and independent of Great Britain.
Knowing their proclamation would bring difficulties, they committed themselves and their constituents to what they believed was their “unalienable right” — freedom from tyranny.
The Revolutionary War resulted from their declaration. It was a time of tremendous hardship for the new nation, but it ushered in a new era for the world. What is sometimes overlooked, as we consider both the results and the sufferings of our founders, is the price that was paid by the signers.
Nearly all the 56 men of the Congress could be described as professional politicians, and 24 were lawyers. Yet, by affixing their signatures to Thomas Jefferson’s historical document, they risked everything.
Five were later captured by the British and died after being tortured. Nine were wounded in various confrontations with the enemy, and 12 had their homes set on fire.
The British failed to capture Francis Lewis, who represented New York. But after burning his Long Island estate, they took his wife and threw her aboard a prison ship, where she died a few months later.
Lewis never recovered from his grief.
Others who found their homes destroyed for signing were Lewis Morris, Arthur Middleton and Richard Stockton. Thomas Nelson, Virginia’s governor during the siege of Yorktown, implored General George Washington to blow up his mansion when he learned that British General Lord Cornwallis had made it his headquarters. Washington complied, but in doing so, destroyed Nelson’s main financial asset.
Virginia merchant Carter Braxton owned a fleet of trading vessels when he signed. The Royal Navy tracked down and sank those ships.
North Carolina’s Joseph Hewes also lost his merchant fleet in that he donated it to become the core for the new Continental Navy. He died at the age of 50 in 1779.
Made wealthy through his import business, Robert Morris was placed in charge of the new nation’s finances, which were in sad shape. To feed and equip Washington’s troops for the crossing of the Delaware River — the psychological turning point of the war — Morris used $10,000 of his own money, thus placing his personal fortune at the country’s disposal. He later died in poverty.
A year after signing, William Whipple of New Hampshire fought alongside Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates at Saratoga. The American victory there brought France into the conflict.
Connecticut’s Oliver Wolcott and South Carolina’s Arthur Middleton, Thomas Heyward and Edward Rutledge all saw combat, and the latter three were captured and tortured.
George Walton of Georgia was taken captive in battle, but received his release in a prisoner exchange in 1779. Fellow Georgian Button Gwinnett led a failed invasion of British Florida after returning from Philadelphia. Shortly afterward he was shot in a duel by political opponent Lachlan McIntosh.
New Jersey’s Richard Stockton was captured in November 1776, and spent years in prison. After his release he died a pauper in Princeton.
The same month that Stockton was captured, British troops devastated the campus of the College of New Jersey. Signer John Witherspoon spent the remainder of the war rebuilding the college before he went blind in 1792.
Thomas Lynch of South Carolina and his wife were lost at sea when their ship disappeared during a voyage to the West Indies.
Constant British pursuit prevented Delaware’s Caesar Rodney from getting medical treatment for a cancerous growth on his face. It claimed his life in 1784.
Thomas Jefferson went on to be elected governor of Virginia, but had to resign and go into hiding because the British hunted him relentlessly.
In the past 233 years since these 56 brave men risked all in the cause of freedom, many others have sacrificed to maintain and extend this wonderful gift. Their faith in freedom as a right granted by the providence of the Almighty to all peoples has been the great heritage of our country.
There are still enemies of this precious bestowal, and the threats may be more subtle today.
Americans need to be on the alert to guard against them, and to strengthen the things which will make us faithful to the cause of freedom.
http://forestlaketimes.com/content/view/3182/1/

Federal agents hunt for guns, one house at a time
In front of a run-down shack in north Houston, federal agents step from a government sedan into 102-degree heat and face a critical question: How can the woman living here buy four high-end handguns in one day?
The house is worth $35,000. A screen dangles by a wall-unit air conditioner. Porch swing slats are smashed, the smattering of grass is flattened by cars and burned yellow by sun.
“I’ll do the talking on this one,” agent Tim Sloan, of South Carolina, told partner Brian Tumiel, of New York.
Success on the front lines of a government blitz on gunrunners supplying Mexican drug cartels with Houston weaponry hinges on logging heavy miles and knocking on countless doors. Dozens of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — sent here from around the country — are needed to follow what ATF acting director Kenneth Melson described as a “massive number of investigative leads.”
All told, Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California and Arizona.
Among other things, the agents are combing neighborhoods and asking people about suspicious purchases as well as seeking explanations as to how their guns ended up used in murders, kidnappings and other crimes in Mexico.
“Ever turning up the heat on cartels, our law enforcement and military partners in the government of Mexico have been working more closely with the ATF by sharing information and intelligence,” Melson said Tuesday during a firearms-trafficking summit in New Mexico.
Firearms dealers visited
The ATF recently dispatched 100 veteran agents to its Houston division, which reaches to the border.
The mission is especially challenging because, officials say, that while Houston is the number one point of origin for weapons traced back to the United States from Mexico, the government can’t compile databases on gun owners under federal law.
Agents instead review firearms dealers’ records in person.
People who are legally in the United States and have clean criminal records, but are facing economic problems are often recruited by traffickers to buy weapons on their behalf in order to shield themselves from scrutiny.
Knocks at the door of the shack that looked to be the definition of hard times went unanswered.
“I am out of here,” Sloan said a few moments later, as a pit bull lazily sauntered from the back yard. “I don’t like pit bulls walking up behind me.”
Test information source
On second thought, Sloan switched to Spanish and interviewed a neighbor.
The neighbor said the woman left a month ago after a fight with her husband or boyfriend, who still lived there with what she called “other degenerates.”
“An angry ex-girlfriend or wife is the best person in the world, the greatest source of information,” Sloan said.
The night before, the duo were in a stakeout where they watched a weapons sale.
They also combined efforts with the Drug Enforcement Administration for an aircraft to stealthily follow traffickers to the border.
On this day, agents weren’t wearing raid jackets or combat boots and weren’t armed with warrants.
Guns were hidden under civilian shirts.
Another tip took agents on a 30-minute drive from the shack to a sprawling home with a pool in the back and an American flag out front.
It turned out two handguns, of a type drug gangsters prefer, were bought by a pastor for target practice.
Some stories, they say, are hard to believe.
The lamest so far came from a police officer: He said he bought a few military-style rifles, left them in his car and — on the same night — forgot to lock a door. He couldn’t explain why he didn’t file a police report or why he visited Mexico the day after the alleged theft.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6505651.html

Should linking be illegal?
In a misguided attempt to aid newspapers, one of America's most influential judges is suggesting a new copyright law
Those who wish to keep the internet free and open had best dust off their legal arguments. One of America's most influential conservative judges, Richard Posner, has proposed a ban on linking to online content without permission. The idea, he said in a blog post last week, is to prevent aggregators and bloggers from linking to newspaper websites without paying:
Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.
Posner's notion set off an eruption from the likes of Jeff Jarvis, Matt Welch and Erick Schonfeld, among others. And they are right to be furious. Not only would Posner stop online media dead in their tracks, but he would also overturn long-established rules of fair use, which, among others things, allow for the reproduction of short excerpts of copyrighted material for the purposes of commentary, parody and the like – precisely what bloggers and aggregators do all the time.
And Posner, who sits on the seventh circuit court of appeals in Chicago, has a way of getting his way. A brilliant, provocative thinker and a frighteningly prolific writer, he was described in a 2001 New Yorker profile as "the most mercilessly seditious legal theorist of his generation". And if, at 70, Posner and his generation are not quite so influential as they once were, he is still a formidable presence on the legal scene.
In something of an irony for journalists who might be inclined to cheer Posner's latest, it was a 2003 opinion he wrote that helped cement journalists' modern status as cultural and social pariahs. Posner's decision in the case of McKevitt v Pallasch did more than any other to vanquish the idea that journalists called into court had some protection under the first amendment from having to reveal their confidential sources.
For a generation, journalists and their lawyers had relied upon the hazy wording of a 1972 supreme court case called Branzburg v Hayes, in which a bare majority ruled there was no reporter's privilege. One of the majority, Lewis Powell, wrote what his fellow justice Potter Stewart called "an enigmatic concurring opinion" suggesting that maybe, in some cases, there was a privilege. As retired New York Times lawyer James Goodale explained in the Frontline documentary News Wars several years ago, media lawyers used Powell's opinion to keep the reporter's privilege on life support for more than 30 years until Posner, finally, pulled the plug.
As an appeals court judge, Posner could not, of course, overrule the supreme court. In McKevitt, though, he didn't have to: he wrote that he had reread Branzburg and had come to the conclusion that, lo and behold, it meant what it said. No more reporter's privilege, although the states were free to create their own through shield laws and state court precedents. (All except Wyoming have done so, many of them long before McKevitt. And Congress may create a federal shield law later this year.)
Posner's opinion on copyright – expressed, thankfully, in a blog post rather than a ruling from the bench – has its roots in a celebrated essay he wrote for the New York Times Book Review in 2005 called Bad News. Although Posner was complimentary toward bloggers, and even asserted that their swarm-like verification system was superior in some ways to that of the traditional media, he nevertheless offered a few withering observations about where they get their material.
"The bloggers are parasitical on the conventional media," Posner wrote. "They copy the news and opinion generated by the conventional media, often at considerable expense, without picking up any of the tab. The degree of parasitism is striking in the case of those blogs that provide their readers with links to newspaper articles. The links enable the audience to read the articles without buying the newspaper."
Posner comes across as willfully blind to the ways in which bloggers and aggregators actually drive traffic to news sites, resulting in more readers seeing their content and, thus, their advertising. Yes, there are ways not to do it – the Boston Globe's wholesale, automated aggregation of a competitor's local content in a case settled out of court earlier this year comes to mind. But normal linking practices benefit everyone. The news business may be cratering, but it's not the fault of those who link to newspaper content.
Fortunately, Posner this time can't transform his desires into a judicial decree – his proposal would have to enacted in the form of an amendment to the copyright law. Unfortunately, such an idea is already making the rounds. Not to go all Kevin Bacon here, but Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz, who supports it, is married to Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, which led Jeff Jarvis to demand that Schultz register as a federal lobbyist.
The thing is, Congress has been known to act with great alacrity on copyright matters when they affect corporate interests. And newspaper owners have been remarkably successful in calling attention to their plight.
But though tax breaks, special non-profit status and other federal goodies will likely go nowhere, a law aimed squarely at the linking practices of sites such as Google News and the Huffington Post would probably prove popular, the facts be damned.
It's ominous that those would push for such a law now have an ally as brilliant and influential as Posner. Keep a close eye on this one.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jul/01/richard-posner-copyright-linking-newspapers

Ham radio operators not yielding to future By Hilary Kraus Staff writer
Chuck Ward likes to dial his technology down a notch.
He's a ham radio guy
And this is the time of year when Ward is in hog heaven as he and the Cape Fear Amateur Radio Society compete in national Field Day
The 61-year-old Morse code expert was among the 25 radio operators who gathered at Methodist University on Saturday and Sunday for the 24-hour event.
"Cell phones, the Internet, computers are OK. It's that time of change in the world." Ward said Sunday.
"This is just an old skill I want to keep alive."
The object of the competition was to communicate with as many other ham radio operators throughout the U.S., trading signals reports and location information.
Conversations were kept brief, be it through pecking out Morse codes or talking.
"It's like any other hobby," said Ward, past president of the local club, "This hobby is technical and very challenging."
To get things up and running, the club erected 40- and 30-foot antennas outside Reeves Auditorium.
Members set up mobile stations under tents to keep out of the heat. They operated off generators, batteries and solar energy.
Ward, who got a few hours of shut- eye in the back of his truck, said his group made more than 720 contacts. The only state missing was Vermont.
The Cape Fear Amateur Radio Society has about 95 members. Many are retired military.
"It's tough to get young people involved," said Leon Porter, a 43-year-old voice operator. "Their thinking is, why do I need to sit in front of a radio to talk to someone on the other side of the world when you have a cell phone to do that?"
Young Ethan LaMaster takes advantage of today's conveniences but also looks at things differently than his peers.
The 18-year-old got his ham radio license when he was 10.
LaMaster, a recent graduate of East Bladen High School, said he picked up the hobby because it's fun. Now, he likes the idea of being ready if disaster strikes.
"A car battery, a generator, any source of power and we can communicate," LaMaster said.
Ward started teaching Morse code in 1968 and introduced LaMaster to amateur radio operating.
"Morse code is my second language," Ward said.
His wife, he said, is not a fan.
"I had ham radio before I met her. That was one of the conditions," Ward said.
"She doesn't share the same enthusiasm."
http://www.fayobserver.com/Articles/2009/06/29/913233

Extra addition, a couple of articles on the economy and the flu that should not be over looked.

MOUNTAIN OF DEBT: Rising debt may be next crisis
July 3, 2009 - 3:38pm By TOM RAUM Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Founding Fathers left one legacy not celebrated on Independence Day but which affects us all. It's the national debt.
The country first got into debt to help pay for the Revolutionary War. Growing ever since, the debt stands today at a staggering $11.5 trillion _ equivalent to over $37,000 for each and every American. And it's expanding by over $1 trillion a year.
The mountain of debt easily could become the next full-fledged economic crisis without firm action from Washington, economists of all stripes warn.
"Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently told Congress.
Higher taxes, or reduced federal benefits and services _ or a combination of both _ may be the inevitable consequences.
The debt is complicating efforts by President Barack Obama and Congress to cope with the worst recession in decades as stimulus and bailout spending combine with lower tax revenues to widen the gap.
Interest payments on the debt alone cost $452 billion last year _ the largest federal spending category after Medicare-Medicaid, Social Security and defense. It's quickly crowding out all other government spending. And the Treasury is finding it harder to find new lenders.
The United States went into the red the first time in 1790 when it assumed $75 million in the war debts of the Continental Congress.
Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary, said, "A national debt, if not excessive, will be to us a national blessing."
Some blessing.
Since then, the nation has only been free of debt once, in 1834-1835.
The national debt has expanded during times of war and usually contracted in times of peace, while staying on a generally upward trajectory. Over the past several decades, it has climbed sharply _ except for a respite from 1998 to 2000, when there were annual budget surpluses, reflecting in large part what turned out to be an overheated economy.
The debt soared with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and economic stimulus spending under President George W. Bush and now Obama.
The odometer-style "debt clock" near Times Square _ put in place in 1989 when the debt was a mere $2.7 trillion _ ran out of numbers and had to be shut down when the debt surged past $10 trillion in 2008.
The clock has since been refurbished so higher numbers fit. There are several debt clocks on Web sites maintained by public interest groups that let you watch hundreds, thousands, millions zip by in a matter of seconds.
The debt gap is "something that keeps me awake at night," Obama says.
He pledged to cut the budget "deficit" roughly in half by the end of his first term. But "deficit" just means the difference between government receipts and spending in a single budget year.
This year's deficit is now estimated at about $1.85 trillion.
Deficits don't reflect holdover indebtedness from previous years. Some spending items _ such as emergency appropriations bills and receipts in the Social Security program _ aren't included, either, although they are part of the national debt.
The national debt is a broader, and more telling, way to look at the government's balance sheets than glancing at deficits.
According to the Treasury Department, which updates the number "to the penny" every few days, the national debt was $11,518,472,742,288 on Wednesday.
The overall debt is now slightly over 80 percent of the annual output of the entire U.S. economy, as measured by the gross domestic product.
By historical standards, it's not proportionately as high as during World War II, when it briefly rose to 120 percent of GDP. But it's still a huge liability.
Also, the United States is not the only nation struggling under a huge national debt. Among major countries, Japan, Italy, India, France, Germany and Canada have comparable debts as percentages of their GDPs.
Where does the government borrow all this money from?
The debt is largely financed by the sale of Treasury bonds and bills. Even today, amid global economic turmoil, those still are seen as one of the world's safest investments.
That's one of the rare upsides of U.S. government borrowing.
Treasury securities are suitable for individual investors and popular with other countries, especially China, Japan and the Persian Gulf oil exporters, the three top foreign holders of U.S. debt.
But as the U.S. spends trillions to stabilize the recession-wracked economy, helping to force down the value of the dollar, the securities become less attractive as investments. Some major foreign lenders are already paring back on their purchases of U.S. bonds and other securities.
And if major holders of U.S. debt were to flee, it would send shock waves through the global economy _ and sharply force up U.S. interest rates.
As time goes by, demographics suggest things will get worse before they get better, even after the recession ends, as more baby boomers retire and begin collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
While the president remains personally popular, polls show there is rising public concern over his handling of the economy and the government's mushrooming debt _ and what it might mean for future generations.
If things can't be turned around, including establishing a more efficient health care system, "We are on an utterly unsustainable fiscal course," said the White House budget director, Peter Orszag.
Some budget-restraint activists claim even the debt understates the nation's true liabilities.
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, established by a former commerce secretary and investment banker, argues that the $11.4 trillion debt figures does not take into account roughly $45 trillion in unlisted liabilities and unfunded retirement and health care commitments.
That would put the nation's full obligations at $56 trillion, or roughly $184,000 per American, according to this calculation.
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On the Net:
Treasury Department "to the penny" national debt breakdown: http://tinyurl.com/yrxrsh
Peter G. Peterson Foundation independent assessment of the national debt: http://www.pgpf.org/
"Deficits do Matter" debt clock: http://tinyurl.com/l6mvjb

Hong Kong finds 1st case of Tamiflu-resistant H1N1
HONG KONG, July 3 (Reuters) - Hong Kong's health department said on Friday it had detected a case of human swine influenza virus that was resistant to Tamiflu, the main antiviral flu drug.
The World Health Organisation has declared a pandemic is under way from the new H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu.
"This is the first time Tamiflu resistance in HSI virus (was) found in Hong Kong," a spokesman for the health department said in a statement.
Only two other cases of Tamiflu-resistant H1N1 have been found so far, in Denmark and Japan.
According to the statement, the virus was isolated from a specimen taken from a 16-year-old girl coming from San Francisco, who was taken in by the Port Health Office at the Hong Kong International Airport upon arrival on June 11.
The virus was identified during the health department's routine sensitivity test of HSI virus to oseltamivir and zanamivir, the spokesman said.
Tamiflu, a tablet known generically as oseltamivir, is made by Switzerland's Roche AG and Gilead Sciences (GILD.O), while Relenza, an inhaled drug known generically as zanamivir, is made by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) under licence from Australia's Biota Inc (BTA.AX).
The department said that tests showed that the strain was sensitive to zanamivir.
Resistance to Tamiflu has been previously documented in the deadly bird flu virus H5N1 and seasonal H1N1 flu.
"You can always expect a certain number of resistances," said Roche spokeswoman Claudia Schmitt. "It does not necessarily mean that the strain is resistant to Tamiflu."
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssHealthcareNews/idUSHKG30741920090703